Survey of Strategies for Switching Off Base Stations in Heterogeneous Networks for Greener 5G Systems

TLDR

Heterogeneous networks are central to 5G, and reducing energy consumption by dynamically switching off base stations has become a major research focus. This paper provides an overview of BS switch‑off strategies and outlines future research challenges. The review surveys random, distance‑aware, load‑aware, auction‑based, and joint BS‑switch‑off designs, including their integration with user association, resource allocation, interference cancellation, and cloud‑RAN architectures.

Abstract

For heterogeneous network, which has been viewed as one pioneering technology for making cellular networks be evolved into 5G systems, reducing energy consumption by dynamically switching off base stations (BSs) has attracted increasing attention recently. With aiming at optimization on energy saving only or another energy-related performance tradeoffs, several BS switch-off strategies have been proposed from different design perspectives, such as random, distance-aware, load-aware, and auction-based strategies. Furthermore, work has been done to consider joint design for BS switch-off strategy and another strategies, such as user association, resource allocation, and physical-layer interference cancellation strategies. Finally, there have been research results about this topic in emerging cloud radio access networks. In this paper, we take an overview on these technologies and present the state of the art on each aspect. Some challenges that need to be solved in this research filed for future work are also described.